Student Publications Building

Have you ever felt like you were not represented by the administration? Have they taken credit for something you and your peers worked hard for? The Michigan Daily aims to set the record straight.

The Daily has been a pillar for student reporting for about 130 years, since its first edition printed in 1890. Since then, its audience has grown tremendously. In 2022, the Daily had more than 110,000 individual viewers to its website.

The Daily is independently funded and many Daily staff and alumni have used their backgrounds and experiences from working on the newspaper in order to engage themselves in social justice, climate change, and civil rights activism.

One notable alumni is Tom Hayden, class of '61. Before he authored the Port Huron Statement, the manifesto of the Students for a Democratic Society, he was leading the charge here at our University as a reporter and—eventually—Editor-in-Chief of the Michigan Daily. In an ideal world, he saw a university’s job as fostering connections between students and encouraging them to break the status quo and aspire and fight for a better world. It was he, along with other student journalists at the Daily, who played a key role in the ouster of Dean Deborah Bacon, which we just heard about.

What enabled Hayden and others to speak their mind during the 1960s was the Daily’s financial independence from the University (though, notably, the University does own this building). This was a game changer, especially during a time of unrest throughout campus.

In December 1964, opinion pieces in the Michigan Daily brought the spirit of the protests happening at the University of California, Berkeley, where students were protesting prohibitions on political speech by its administration, to the University of Michigan. And while the Angell Hall anti-war Teach-In of 1965 grabbed national headlines, the Daily also shed light on other student-led protests and actions. One example of this is the “stay-in” at the Michigan Theater in January 1965—some students attended movies but stayed into the next showing, while others picketed outside—to demonstrate against raised ticket prices, which they thought was yet another example of student budgets being pinched. This garnered front-page headlines in the Daily.

This is a building built in 1932 that houses the heartbeat of student activism, an important center for discussions around civil rights, the Vietnam War, and more. All run by and reported by students.

As we continue our tour, think about the balance of administrative power and student power and how it has been a driving theme for life at U-M.

Juliar, Michael. “Demonstration by 600 Students Protests Movie Price Increase.” Michigan Daily. January 23, 1965. https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/midaily/mdp.39015071754308/113

Kirschbaum, Laurence. “Apathy Here, Revolution There—Why?” Michigan Daily. December 9, 1964. https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/midaily/mdp.39015071754316/750

Michigan Daily Digital Archives. Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. digital.bentley.umich.edu/midaily.